The Food Riots Grow More Intense As People All Over The Middle East Literally Set Themselves On Fire

Two more men have set themselves on fire in Egypt and Mauritania, raising to six the number of self-immolation attempts apparently influenced by a similar action in Tunisia that helped trigger a popular uprising.

The husband of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., says that his wife’s medical progress is encouraging, but she faces a long recovery.

Iran has been developing contacts in more than 30 countries to acquire technology, equipment and raw materials needed to build a nuclear bomb, a Norwegian newspaper said on Sunday, citing U.S. diplomatic cables.

China is in discussions with North Korea about stationing its troops in the isolated state for the first time since 1994, a South Korean newspaper reported Saturday.

The United States is reported to be bracing to strike North Korea if its long-range missile capabilities begin to pose too big a threat.

Last year global arms trade exceeded $71 billion, which is the record figure since the end of the Cold War. In terms of volume Russia was the world’s second largest arms exporter after the US. According to the Center for the Analysis of the Global Arms Trade, in 2010 Russia’s arms exports amounted to almost $10 billion.

Venezuela has overtaken Saudi Arabia as the world leader in oil reserves with certified deposits leaping to 297 billion barrels at the end of 2010, President Hugo Chavez’s government said Saturday.

Exploding food prices pose the biggest threat to the market and political situation in 2011 according to Philippe Gijsels, head of research at BNP Paribas Fortis Global Markets.

OPEC’s leading oil price hawk Iran joined Venezuela and Libya Sunday to say it saw no need for the cartel to consider raising crude supplies to rein in crude prices now near $100 a barrel.

As oil prices approach $100 a barrel, a level the market hasn’t seen in over two years, there is growing concern that it could hamper the global economic recovery.

Chinese President Hu Jintao emphasized the need for cooperation with the U.S. in areas from new energy to space ahead of his visit to Washington this week, but he called the present U.S. dollar-dominated currency system a “product of the past” and highlighted moves to turn the yuan into a global currency.

Lindsey Williams says that he has learned recently from two of this longtime friends, both retired top executives of major oil producers, that the price of crude oil is slated to move to $150-200 per barrel soon.

According to a series of studies released recently, American schools have gone from the best of the world, to just middle of the pack, increasingly due to challenges faced outside of school.

Homeland Security is now detaining American citizens upon their re-entry into the country, and as part of that detention, literally seizing their electronic products — laptops, cellphones, Blackberries and the like — copying and storing the data, and keeping that property for months on end, sometimes never returning it.

A Seattle man’s trial in Albuquerque on charges of making trouble at an airport security checkpoint is getting attention from civil liberties groups all over the country.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has promised Afghan President Hamid Karzai that there will be a lasting American commitment to the country well beyond 2014, when NATO forces are scheduled to turn over security of the nation to Afghan forces.

The U.S. army is struggling to find about 35,000 soldiers, most of them veterans now, who are owed bonuses because they were forced to remain in the military beyond their normal enlistment.

A sanitation district in Pennsylvania has notified homeowners that its representatives will be making personal visits to every structure served by its network of drainpipes because that’s what the federal Environmental Protection Agency is demanding.

Concerns over mass animal deaths continue to mount with the news that around 200 cows have mysteriously been found dead in Wisconsin, as well as hundreds of seals washing ashore dead in Labrador, Canada.

Towns in the southern Australian state of Victoria were on Monday bracing for their biggest floods in 200 years as the death toll from the natural disaster in Queensland rose.

The death toll from mudslides and flooding in Brazil climbed above 520 and was rising amid fears that further rain could claim many more lives this weekend.

In an emotionally charged meeting this week sponsored by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, fishermen, Gulf residents and community leaders vented their increasingly grave concerns about the widespread health issues brought on by the three-month-long disaster.

The sun over Greenland has risen two days early, baffling scientists and sparking fears that Arctic icecaps are melting faster than previously thought.

A new study from the University of California, San Francisco reveals that 100 percent of expectant mothers are contaminated with highly toxic synthetic chemicals.

A new report from a secretive, highly influential group of scientists is urging the Department of Defense to begin collecting and mapping the full genome of all military personnel — a move that could well give the Pentagon the ability to select for certain genetic predispositions.

The Quebec Human Rights Tribunal has ordered a Montreal man to pay his gay neighbours $12,000 for allegedly subjecting them to “homophobic comments”.

Lastly, Glenn Beck has stated in his new book that it really does not matter what religion or religious leader that people follow and that there are many different paths to heaven.